Lake Louisa State Park

Two of my best friends, DeAnna and her husband Aaron, have yet to meet my boyfriend of about 6 months, Carl. This is mostly because it's almost impossible for the 4 of us to all have the same day off work. The stars aligned this weekend and we made plans to take a hike with the dogs in Lake Louisa State Park here in Central Florida. The weather said sunny and in the mid 80s. Sounds great right? Yeah, well, here in Florida sunny and in the mid 80s can sometimes mean miserably hot (and just think it gets about 20 degrees hotter in the summer)! The hike we took was about 9 miles and we definitely did not pack enough water, neither for us or for the dogs. It didn't help that a lot of the trails were out in the open sun, with little to no shade available. The poor dogs kept running up ahead of us, finding shade, then laid there and waited for us to catch up. There were even times when we had them on-leash and Wuerrfel would just stop and lay down, refusing to go on. We ended up stopping a lot, not only to let the dogs rest, but also to find water (luckily there were plenty of small ponds around) to douse them down to try to keep them cool. I don't think Mia (or us!) were more happy to be done with a hike! Those 9 miles took us 4 hours! I guess hiking season for us Floridians is already over the for year :/


Mia hiding in the bushes - "It's ok Mom, I'll wait here, you go on without me!"


Harvin and Wuerffel trying to find shade - we were actually a little worried about snakes in the bushes, but the dogs were so hot we had to take the risk and let them rest in the shade


They found this tree and laid down in this formation (I know, it looks like I made them pose lol!)


DeAnna and Aaron with their boys


"Mom, I love hiking...that was NOT hiking! That was MISERABLE!"

Sorry Mia, no more Florida hiking until Fall, I promise

Check out our route, I tracked it on my phone